COMM002: Media and Society

Unit 7: Movies in a Transmedia WorldWhat’s more heroic, saving the world from evil or making a billion
dollars in little more than two weeks? If you’re Walt Disney Pictures,
definitely it’s the latter. The Avengersbrought in $207.4 million in
its first weekend at the end of April 2012 and broke the $1 billion
barrier two weekends later.[v]The film featured the Marvel
comic-book characters Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Hulk,
among others. As movie-making has become more and more expensive,
studios have sought tested story lines that provide viewers with a sense
of familiarity and puts them immediately in the action. Comic books
provide rich, well-developed worlds and strong characters that can be
exploited through transmedia, in which “a fiction get dispersed
systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of
creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience,” in the
words of Henry Jenkins.[vi] Transmedia involves synergies,
such as the one between comic-book makers and film studios. Iron Man has
three movies of his own, the comic book (of course), a video game, and
websites, including one that features an online game for younger
children. In 2011, studios released 10 films based on comic-book heroes,
including several animated features.[vii] The heavy reliance
on comic books for movie scripts is just the latest example of how
culture and movies are intertwined. In the subunits below, we will
examine several movies that demonstrate this interaction. We will delve
into the history of motion pictures and examine the economic, social,
and technological forces that have shaped this powerful cultural
medium.

Unit 7 Time Advisory
This unit should take you approximately 13.75 hours to complete.

☐ Subunit 7.1: 6.25 hours

☐ Subunit 7.1.1: 2 hours

☐ Subunit 7.1.2: 4.25 hours

☐ Subunit 7.2: 3.75 hours

☐ Subunit 7.3: 2.25 hours

☐ Unit 7 Assignments: 1 hour

☐ Unit 7 Assessment: 30 minutes

Unit7 Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- identify key points in motion picture development and technology;
- explain how movies are shaped by controversial cultural themes, and
in turn shape culture;
- discuss the economic forces that shape today’s movie studios and
independent filmmaking; and
- define and discuss transmedia, citing examples from the movie
industry.

Instructions: These sections of Understanding Media and Culture
on pages 330-350 provide a succinct history of motion pictures. It
is a history of parallel tracks: the constant technological drive to
add to the spectacle and realism of movies, and the creative drive
to use movies as a form of expression. Both of these tracks were
there from the start, and each strongly affected the other. Think,
for example, of the impact sound had on movies. Technology also
affected how we watch movies, as the readings on Cinerama show. The
trend continues today with the move to digital presentation.

Reading these sections and taking notes should take approximately
45 minutes.

7.1.1 Key Films in the Early Days of Motion PicturesThe films discussed in the following subunits cover the first 20 years
of movie making, from Thomas Edison’s The Sneeze, believed to be the
earliest copyrighted film, to D. W. Griffith’s three-hour spectacular
Birth of a Nation.

Instructions: “Fred Ott’s Sneeze” (1894) was the first motion
picture to be copyrighted in the United States, according to the
Internet Movie Database. As with the films you’ll watch from the
Lumière Brothers, the subject matter is a simple act of everyday
life, a sneeze. Audiences were thrilled not by the story line, but
by the simple act of seeing moving images.

Instructions: The Lumière Brothers developed a lightweight camera,
the cinématographe, that also could make prints of movies and show
the films to audiences. Then they sent their own people around the
world to shoot and show slices of life from faraway places. Watch
some of these early films.

Instructions: Watch the short documentary about how the Lumière
brothers conceived of the first vertically integrated motion-picture
company. The next step for them would have been developing talent to
produce feature films, a step they never took.

Watching these videos should take you approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Georges Méliès, a stage magician by trade, saw the
potential for magical storytelling in motion pictures. He is
credited with using the first double exposure, stop-camera, and
dissolves. Méliès made more than 500 films, financing, directing,
photographing and starring in nearly every one.[1]

Watching this video should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Watch as much of “The Birth of a Nation” as you have
time, but note the depiction of slave life in the South at about the
15-minute mark, the major battle scene about 50 minutes into the
movie, and the controversial ending, in which the Ku Klux Klan makes
a heroic charge to the rescue. Griffith put the camera in the
action, taking it out of the studio for grandly staged battles. But
the racial overtones of his film overshadow its technique.

Watching portions of this video should take approximately 30
minutes.

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Instructions: After you’ve watched some of the key parts of The
Birth of a Nation, read some of the reaction to Griffith’s film.
It’s instructive that white actors in black makeup played all of the
key roles of slaves.

Reading this section and taking notes should take approximately 15
minutes.

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7.1.2 The March of Technology7.1.2.1 A Short History of the Talkies
- Reading: University of Virginia: “Talking Motion Pictures”
Link: University of Virginia: “Talking Motion
Pictures” (HTML)

Instructions: This short reading will fill in some of the technical
details on how talking pictures developed and provide a short
discussion on the cultural effects of sound with movies.

Reading this article and taking notes should take approximately 15
minutes.

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Instructions: Watch these videos of historic talking movies. The
first is a test reel produced by Lee DeForest, who also was a
pioneer in the development of television. It features Eddie Cantor,
a popular vaudeville performer who had his own television show in
the 1950s. The second video is a summary of the history of movie
technology. About two minutes into the video, you’ll see part of the
climactic number from the first talking movie, The Jazz Singer, in
which Al Jolson dons blackface makeup and sings “Mammy.”

Watching these videos should take approximately 15 minutes.

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In the subunits that follow, you will see how race has been a
sensitive issue throughout the history of movies. The Jazz Singer
was just one example of the continued use of blackface − white
actors wearing black makeup and acting stereotypically “black,” a
type of entertainment that dates from before the Civil War. Watch
this discussion of the subject that includes video of blackface in
the movies.

Watching this video and taking notes should take approximately 5
minutes.

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Note: The relationship of Jewish culture and Al Jolson’s use of
blackface is discussed further in Michael Rogin’s article
“Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice,” in
Critical Inquiry, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1992). Those wanting to
delve deeper into the topic should seek out this article.

Instructions: Read about the quest for vivid, realistic color at
the American Widescreen Museum website. The site is a bit difficult
to navigate, so use these links to reach the relevant sections. It
will provide a thorough discussion of Technicolor, but as you’ll
discover from these readings, the process was fraught with technical
problems, and it was expensive.

Reading these sections should take approximately 30 minutes.

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Instructions: The ideal movie technology would be virtual reality,
but falling short of that, a goal of movie technicians has been to
surround the viewer as much as possible, with the moving image and
with sound. Wide-screen methods such as Cinemascope, VistaVision,
and Todd-AO were developed to engage the viewer’s peripheral vision,
thus making the experience more realistic. These techniques used
special lenses to compress a wide field of view, then special
projection lenses to widen the movie in the theater.

Reading this section and taking notes should take approximately 5
minutes.

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7.1.2.4.2 The First Super Movie
- Reading: Popular Science: Alden P. Armagnac’s “Super-Movies Put
You in the Show”
Link: Popular Science: Alden P. Armagnac’s “Super-Movies Put You
in the
Show” (HTML)

Instructions: This article from the 1950s will explain the complex
three-camera system called Cinerama. It enjoyed a short, spectacular
run of about 20 years that included building special theaters around
the country. As you read the article, think about the parallel with
IMAX movies today.

Reading this article should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: On the webpage above, please type “148” into the page
number box at the bottom of the screen. Then, read pages 148-152.

In the subunit above, we saw how wide-screen technology changed the
culture of how we got to the movies. People in the 1950s and ‘60s
left the small-town theater behind and visited a special high-tech
theater in the city, such as the Cooper in suburban Minneapolis and
the River Hills in Des Moines, Iowa. In this article, Nicholson
Baker provides an entertaining account on the life of the
projectionist, and he describes how new technology, the platter
projector, made the multiscreen theater possible, changing again the
culture of how we go to the movies. Today, with digital technology
making its way into theaters, the job of projectionist may soon be a
thing of the past.

Reading this section and taking notes should take approximately 30
minutes.

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Instructions: How will movie theaters attract us if we all have
huge flat-screen televisions showing high-definition digital video?
The way they always have: shock and awe. The astounding screen size
of the IMAX theater and the improved gimmickry of 3D allow theaters
to charge a premium price for tickets. As you’ll read, it’s so
lucrative that IMAX has developed a complex and expensive process to
convert regular 35mm movie film to the sideways running 70mm IMAX
stock.

Reading this article and taking notes should take approximately 15
minutes.

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Instructions: The home-theater television, the digital video
recorder and the Blu-Ray DVD are all part of the same digital soup.
In Chapter 8, Section 4 on pages 369-376, read a summary of how
movies have gone digital.

Reading this selection and taking notes should take approximately
15 minutes.

7.1.2.7.1 Digital Has Its Own Issues
- Reading: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell’s Observations on
Film Art: “Pandora’s digital box: At the festival”
Link: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell’s Observations on Film
Art: “Pandora’s Digital Box: At the
Festival” (HTML)

Instructions: Read David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s
entertaining blog entry about the digital woes of film festivals.
With great technology comes great technical issues.

Reading this post should take approximately 30 minutes.

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Instructions: Bordwell and Thompson turn their attention to various
digital storage formats, beginning with the video compact disc in
1993. These blog entries, later collected in a book, provide some
history and an evaluation of the current state of digital media. It
also illustrates a basic quandary of digital media: how to preserve
it in a form that will be playable in the distant future.

Reading this article should take approximately 30 minutes.

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Instructions: Chapter 8, Section 2 on pages 350-358 describes the
cultural forces acting on the film industry and the ways films
affect our culture. In the subunits to follow, you will read about a
revolutionary year in Hollywood, 1967, when four films forever
changed how movies were made. These films changed our culture, too.
From that year on, producers and directors felt a new freedom to
follow their vision, leaving behind the cultural restraints of the
past. Bonnie and Clyde begat The Godfather;The Graduate begat
Alice’s Restaurant. Today, movies routinely portray interracial
relationships, but in 1967, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was
shocking to many. In the Heat of the Night gave birth to a new
image of the African-American male actor, one fulfilled by Will
Smith, Samuel L. Jackson, and Laurence Fishburne. Those four films,
along with the old-school, big-budget Dr. Dolittle, made up the
1987 Academy Award nominees for Best Picture.

Instructions: As an introduction to the subunits below, read a
review of Mark Harris’s book, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies
and the Birth of the New Hollywood. Harris, a New York Times
movie critic, followed the production of five revolutionary movies
that changed Hollywood and changed our culture. After you read this
review and listen to the author in the next subunit, we’ll look at
each of these five movies and what made them cultural milestones.

Reading this article and taking notes should take approximately 15
minutes.

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Instructions: Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn, took the
daring step of making notorious outlaws the anti-heroes of a tale of
class warfare. With its overt violence, sexual tension, and zany
bluegrass sound track, it was like nothing before it. Like many such
movies, it was controversial even as it was being made. This reading
discusses some of the thought and process that went into making
Bonnie and Clyde.

Reading this article and taking notes should take approximately 15
minutes.

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Instructions: Director Sydney Pollack provides a thoughtful
commentary on Bonnie and Clyde. Pollack calls it one of two movies
made in 1967 that changed Hollywood. The other, he says, was The
Graduate.

Watching this video should take approximately 5 minutes.

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Instructions: For those who love movies, Bonnie and Clyde is a
must watch. The trailer gives you a taste of how the movie was
marketed, and the short clip provides some idea of the themes that
ran through the movie: the publicity-seeking outlaws trading on
Depression-era resentment of the rich. Watch the trailers and clip,
and you’ll get the idea.

Watching these videos should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Read this selection from Mark Harris’s book about
some of the highs and lows of the creative process. Particularly
telling is director Mike Nichols’s comments that he knew he was onto
something different and great. His comment illustrates the media
literacy idea that media texts are made with a purpose to achieve
certain effects.

Reading this section should take approximately 30 minutes.

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Instructions: In 1967, the earliest members of the postwar Baby
Boom generation were graduating from college − and wondering what to
do with their lives. Director Mike Nichols captured that angst
perfectly in the clip above, in which we hear one particular word
uttered: “plastics.”

Watching these videos should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Director Stanley Kramer’s movie is about a liberal
couple, played by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, who learn
that their daughter wants to marry a black man, Sidney Poitier. It’s
a bit of a setup: Poitier is a handsome, urbane doctor who is
working to stomp out tropical diseases. He’s the kind of guy any
mother would want her daughter to marry. New York Times columnist
Frank Rich, writing about it in 2008, sarcastically called it
“Hollywood’s idea of a stirring call for racial justice.” [1] But in
1967, interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states until the
Supreme Court struck down the laws in June of that year. And up to
that time, roles even remotely suggesting the superiority of a black
male character would have been unheard of. Donald Bogle will discuss
how this movie began to restore sexuality to black male
characters.

Watching this video should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Mark Harris in his Slate article calls In the Heat
of the Night a “liberal message movie that worked,” mostly because
it had great direction and great actors in Rod Steiger and Sydney
Poitier. His article also describes the harsh reaction from critics
who thought the message of racial reconciliation was unrealistic.
Those old enough will remember that the Civil Rights Movement still
had much to accomplish in 1967, and stories of racial violence in
the South added to the tension of watching this film when it came
out.

Reading this article should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: The clip from the movie shows one of its most
important scenes, when the black detective played by Sydney Poitier
confronts a well-heeled racist. It shocked audiences in 1967;
remember, the nation was just a few years away from the violence
visited on the Freedom Riders.

Watching these videos should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: One of the more entertaining parts of Mark Harris’s
book, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the
New Hollywood, describes the antics of Rex Harrison, the star of
Dr. Dolittle. Harris includes it in his book as the prime example
of the type of movies that were overthrown in his “revolution” by
the other four movies nominated for Best Picture of the 1968 Academy
Awards. Bosley Crowther’s review, dripping with sarcasm, was typical
of the reception this movie received.

Reading this review should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Read Chapter 8, Section 3 on pages 359-369 for an
overview of various aspects of the movie industry, such as the
studio system, independent films, blockbuster movies, and digital
piracy. Keep this reading in mind as you study the subunits to
follow.

Instructions: Read this article to gain an understanding of the
strategic nature of media economics. The appendix to the article
runs down ownership patterns of media conglomerates. Try to connect
Holt’s information with ideas you learned in previous units, such as
vertical integration and transmedia.

Reading this selection should take approximately 30 minutes.

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Instructions: Read this article in The New York Times and you’ll
realize it isn’t easy being the Walt Disney Co. When Walt Disney
expanded his animated film studio into an amusement park in the
1960s, he pioneered transmedia. But vertical integration has its
drawbacks, as this article shows.

Reading this article should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Watch these segments about the origins of Disneyland.
The theme park was Walt Disney’s “move from film to dimensional
entertainment,” as these videos tell you. The various “lands” of the
original Disneyland (Frontierland, Tomorrowland, Adventureland,
Fantasyland and Main Street USA) became segments on Walt’s
personally hosted television show, The Wonderful World of Disney,
a show that also promoted Disney movies. Disney’s genius was to see
all of it as one piece, a transmedia “world” of his creation, right
down to the kitschy nostalgia of Main Street USA, modeled on his
home town of Marceline, Missouri, but really an idealized memory
rather than something real. Disney’s concept of horizontal
integration had one drawback: if one part of the puzzle fails, it
reflects on the whole enterprise.

Watching these videos should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: What do you do with a multibillion-dollar film
franchise when the story runs out? You keep it alive by spreading it
around to other media, a transmedia strategy. Read about Pottermore,
one piece in the transmedia strategy for the Harry Potter
franchise.

Reading this article should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: This activity is OPTIONAL. Pottermore is a big piece
in the transmedia strategy for the Harry Potter franchise. Visit the
site and sign up for a free account if you wish. Note that the books
are at the heart of this site, but that the books have “new
chapters” and are available as e-books. It’s an interesting look at
how transmedia works.

Completing this optional activity should take approximately 15
minutes.

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Instructions: No transmedia strategy is complete these days without
a video game. Go to this webpage to explore a few from the world of
Harry Potter, and try not to get hooked on the Harry Potter “Fight
Death” game.

Completing this activity should take approximately 15 minutes.

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Instructions: Daniel Radcliffe has said that one of his weirder
experiences playing Harry Potter was seeing himself as a LEGO
character. A persistent Internet meme is the LEGO stop-action movie
based on the Harry Potter or Star Wars movies; hundreds are
available on YouTube. Visit this official LEGO site to see how the
toy company draws this meme into its transmedia strategy. The site
also has downloads, a place to buy Harry Potter LEGOs, and of
course, games.

Completing this activity should take approximately 15 minutes.

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7.3.4 The Independent Film Movement
- Reading: The Regents of the University of California, Carsey-Wolf
Center: David Gray’s “5 Things to Know about Trends in Independent
Film”
Link: The Regents of the University of California, Carsey-Wolf
Center: David Gray’s “5 Things to Know about Trends in Independent
Film” (HTML)

Instructions: “Independent” films are a little understood part of
the movie industry, and one that provides much creative juice. This
article provides observations on how independent filmmaking works
and where it’s going.

Reading this article should take approximately 15 minutes.

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